Seduction of the Innocent (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

  He nodded glumly but managed a smile. He said it was nice meeting me, then moved across the way to join a good-looking blonde girl about his age in a Peter Pan blouse with a scarf, shift skirt, bobby sox and saddle shoes. Maybe he got made a fool of tonight, but this kid was going home with something better than Barray or Lehman could ever wangle.

  I hadn’t noticed Maggie coming up. I heard her before I saw her—asking Benny to fix her a Horse’s Neck (ginger ale, whiskey, lemon peel, some ice cubes, in a Collins glass).

  “You straighten that prick out?” I asked.

  “Barray?” she said, lifting her eyebrows an eighth of an inch, a big deal for her. “Yeah. Said if he ever sprang an on-air attack on me like that again, he and his show could find another restaurant to broadcast his bilge.”

  “Bilge, huh? Pretty rough.”

  “He’s an ass.”

  “Why put up with him?” Knowing, but wanting to make her work a little.

  “He builds business.”

  Here at the Strip Joint, she meant; but she wasn’t leveling, not entirely.

  “What you mean is,” I said, “you like having a TV show you can guest on that’s just a few floors down from your digs.”

  “Now you’re calling me lazy.”

  “There must be another word for it, but I can’t think of one right now.”

  Somebody else was moving toward us—Garson Lehman. She glanced at him as he planted himself before us, wearing what I will delicately term a shit-eating grin.

  “I hope you don’t mind a good little intellectual row, Miss Starr,” he said in that nasal whine, which was even more irritating when he was trying to be nice.

  “I don’t mind a good give-and-take, Mr. Lehman.”

  “Please. Make it Garson.”

  She nodded, almost smiled. Then her eyes opened in a “something else I can do for you?” manner.

  His smile twitched nervously under the shaggy mustache. “I, uh, just wanted to make sure you hadn’t taken any great offense. I’m really such a huge admirer of yours.”

  “You made that clear in your defense of my art, years ago.”

  “Yes, I believe I did.” He stuttered a nervous laugh. “I, uh, also...uh...wanted to make an offer. A proposal.”

  “This is so sudden.” One eyebrow went up a whole quarter inch. Damn.

  He raised his palms chest high in surrender. “Obviously— now is not the time or place for business...but it does follow from what we were so spiritedly discussing.”

  “Does it?”

  He nodded vigorously. “As Mr. Barray said, your newspaper syndicate is closely aligned with the comic book business. In this climate, that’s something of a burden.”

  “My shoulders may not be broad, Mr. Lehman, but they can take it.”

  “Please—make it ‘Garson.’ And may I call you ‘Maggie’?”

  She said nothing.

  He swallowed and said, “I believe you know that I have a considerable reputation as a scholar and commentator on the popular arts. I was at the forefront of the anti-comic book controversy—the first to write about the subject, in The Velvet Fist. You might say I paved the way for Dr. Frederick.”

  “Yes, you might.”

  “And the doctor graciously acknowledges that. You know, I helped him on Ravage the Lambs.”

  “Helped him how?”

  His smile seemed nervous. “Well, chiefly research. He credits me in the acknowledgments.”

  Her eyes were like green marbles, cold, unblinking. “That must be gratifying. What is your point, Mr. Lehman?”

  “My point is that if I were to do a weekly column for you ...on the subject of the popular arts...perhaps beginning with a defense of comic strips as opposed to comic books... it would be beneficial to your position.”

  Something glittered in Maggie’s green eyes. What was it? Rage? Amusement?

  “We’d have the Garson Lehman stamp of approval,” she said.

  “Yes! It would be implied, but...yes. Might take some of the heat off.”

  This was like a guy who just set fire to your house offering you a nice cool glass of water. From your own tap.

  “I’ll think about that,” she said.

  He already had a business card palmed, it seemed, and he passed it to her, saying, “You can reach me there. That’s my office. It’s in the Village.”

  No. Really?

  Then he shambled off, smiling, shrugging, even waving.

  “What a schlemiel,” I said.

  “He researched for Kinsey, too, you know. He’s a letch and a pornographer, using comics as a scapegoat.”

  “Everybody needs a hobby.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Germ of something, though.”

  “He’s a germ, all right.”

  “Not my meaning.”

  She turned toward the bar, slipped her perfect fanny onto a stool. Took a healthy sip of her Horse’s Neck. “How long do you need to do a full background check?”

  “Local?”

  “Local.”

  “How full?”

  “Thorough but not obsessive.”

  I shrugged. “Couple of days.”

  “Good. Do one.”

  “On who?”

  “Whom.”

  “Whom, then?”

  She sipped her Horse’s Neck and smiled. “Dr. Werner Frederick. Is whom.”

  Maggie sat behind that big cherry-wood desk of hers—it was smaller than a fry-cook’s griddle, but just—looking both businesslike and lovely. She wore a white-buttoned charcoal linen frock with a man-tailored top, only a man’s arms wouldn’t be bare. Her red hair was down, brushing her shoulders, her makeup subdued (though her mouth was as red as the rose in a vase near her blotter), and her hands were folded as if saying grace. Her desk, typically, obsessively neat, bore little stacks of letters, comics submissions, color proofs and columnist copy.

  I had settled into the wine-colored leather chair across from her maybe thirty seconds ago, crossing my legs, angling myself casually, careful not to wrinkle my light Navy tropical suit with pale yellow shirt and blue-and-yellow patterned tie. We were waiting for her assistant Bryce to bring our standard Coke-on-ice for me and cream-laden coffee for Maggie. It was after lunch, about two o’clock, on Wednesday.

  A quick geography lesson—the office had an Old Boys’ Club look with dark rich wood paneling that hadn’t been changed since the major remodeled in 1932. A parquet floor peeked out around an Oriental rug, a wall of bookshelves at left brimming with unread leather-bound classics that glowered snobbishly across at the opposite wall’s tasteless array of big framed posters of Maggie’s 1941 Broadway show (Starr in Garters), her three movies, and some gaudy burlesque placards, one with her billed over Abbott and Costello.

  Various dark wood, seat-padded chairs lined either wall, for when her two visitor’s chairs couldn’t accommodate the traffic. Wooden filing cabinets jutted from the rear wall, overseen by a portrait of the major by James Montgomery Flagg, which stared across the long, narrow space at the full-figure pastel portrait of Herself in feathers-and-glitter by Rolf Armstrong that loomed over her behind the desk.

  “Tell me about Dr. Frederick,” she said, her hands still folded. She rarely took notes. Like me, she had a good memory.

  “First,” I said, “I’d like to know why you want to know about that joker.”

  Nothing registered on that pretty puss. “Does it matter?”

  “You mean, you’re the boss, so if you say jump, I say how high? No. You say jump, I say yeah, why? I mean, I’m probably gonna jump, but I am a partner in this enterprise.”

  The green eyes were hooded. “You are at that. With a specified role.”

  “Right. Which is help out with investigatory stuff when our syndicate faces lawsuit trouble, or other jams our talent gets into, or run background checks on potential new talent before signing ’em on.”

  “That describes your role well.”

  “It does, and checking on Dr. Frederick’s backgro
und doesn’t fit any of those...unless he’s suing us. You sure as hell aren’t considering hiring him to write a comic strip.”

  “You never know.” She checked her wristwatch, a little silver thing with diamonds that cost her about what my Kaiser-Darrin convertible set me back. “After all, he’ll be here in fifteen minutes.” She smiled sweetly. Or anyway, that was her imitation of a sweet smile.

  I jerked a thumb toward the chair next to me. “Dr. Werner Frederick? Will have his pinched butt right here next to me?”

  “Unless he doesn’t show. Tell me about him.”

  What the hell was she up to?

  Well, she’d said jump, so I jumped.

  “He’s a German, born in Cologne a little before the turn of the century, naturalized as an American in ’29. Studied medicine in Germany and knew Freud. He makes it sound like they worked together, but I didn’t get any confirmation of that. But they knew each other.”

  She nodded. “His specialty, psychiatry.”

  “Yeah. Guess I skipped that. He’s one of those guys showing the dirty ink-blot pictures. Anyway, he joined the staff of the psychiatric clinic at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. In the early thirties, he directed the New York Court of General Sessions’ psychiatric clinic, where all the nasty crooks got their heads shrunk courtesy of the taxpayers. He testified in court a lot, usually for the prosecution, obviously ...but after he testified for Albert Fish’s defense team, he either got fired or just moved on, into private practice.”

  “Albert Fish,” she said distantly. “There’s a noteworthy case.”

  “Yeah. The Brooklyn Vampire. Child rapist, mass murderer, cannibal, perfect for the crime comic books. Interesting that the doc stuck up for Fish, but wants the comics killed.”

  “But they executed Fish, anyway.”

  “Sing Sing. Regular Friday night Fish fry.”

  That got neither a smile nor disgust out of her. Can’t blame a guy for trying.

  “So,” I said, “he went into private practice. He’s a widower, no kids. He lives in the Waldorf Towers, practices out of an office in his suite, and as you might expect has a pretty high-class clientele.”

  “The Waldorf allows him to conduct business out of there?”

  “Yeah. It’s not like he’s selling hot dogs or motorboats.”

  “Did you get a sense of his character?”

  I shrugged. “He’s something of a publicity hound—a lot of radio, TV, magazine stuff, relating to this forthcoming screed on comics. This Ravage the Lambs thing. A big excerpt ran in the Ladies’ Home Journal and attracted a lot of attention, mostly positive. Parents are always glad to have something or somebody to blame for why their brats are brats.”

  She thought about that. Her green eyes, damn near unblinking, were staring past me. At the major, maybe.

  Then she said, “So he’s famous? Household-name famous?”

  “Close to it, at the moment anyway.” I shifted in my seat. “Why doesn’t he do a strip for us? He can psychoanalyze Mug O’Malley and Wonder Guy, right on the funny pages.”

  “You think he’s a crank.”

  “He’s one of those stuffed-shirt do-gooders who come along every now then—goes all the way back to Anthony Comstock, doesn’t it?—who tries to control what other people can publish or read. And he’s making a buck at it. Lots of bucks. Pop psychology trash.”

  “Don’t hold back, Jack.”

  “Look, he does do some good work. He works pro bono with poor kids at a Harlem clinic, for example. He testified recently in that Brown versus Board of Education thing, talking about the negative impact segregation has on Negro youths. He’s not all bad. But he’s dangerous.”

  “To society?”

  “To us!” I sat forward. “Maggie, two of the comic book outfits he’s targeting are tied at the hip to Starr—Levinson Publications, with the Crime Fighter comic strip, and don’t forget, we are just about to climb in bed with Entertaining Funnies, his favorite whipping boy.”

  We were in negotiations right now with EF’s owner/publisher, Robert Price, to syndicate a strip based on his new, very successful comic book, Craze, which lampooned TV shows, comics and movies. The idea for the strip version was to do a color Sunday-only page that lampooned other comic strips, the way Hal Rapp took Dick Tracy on in his strip-within-a-strip, Hawknose Harry. Our sales force, feeling out prospective clients, considered it sure-fire.

  The door at the rear of the office opened and a slender male figure in black turtleneck and slacks entered with a tray in hand bearing the Coke and coffee. This was Bryce, a handsome, trimly bearded former Broadway dancer of perhaps thirty, who ruled the little world of the reception area with its tucked-away kitchenette. When a busted ankle had ended his stage career, he got hired on by Maggie as her major domo, and was as loyal to Maggie as Tonto to the Lone Ranger.

  He was also unashamedly flaming. Maybe he’d been reading those Batwing-and-Sparrow comic books.

  He delivered the coffee to Maggie, waited for her to taste and test the warmth and cream content, got a nod from her when she had, then he placed the Coke glass on the waiting coaster, uninterested in any review from me on my beverage, then stood there vaguely petulant, like he was waiting for either a tip or an apology.

  “What?” Maggie asked.

  He spoke in a melodic second tenor; the melody at the moment was in a minor key. “That Dr. Frederick character is in the waiting area. He is, I believe, ten minutes early. Someone should inform him that being ten minutes early is as offensive as being ten minutes late.”

  I said, “Maybe you could wrangle a quickie shrink session out of him. Just ask him a few innocent questions and he’ll never know he’s been had.”

  Bryce’s chin jerked upward. “He’s the last person I’d allow inside here,” he said, tapping his cranium. “He believes people like me are sick. That we are twisted perverts and should either be cured or institutionalized.”

  I shrugged. “What do you expect from a Nazi?”

  That actually made Maggie smile a little, but she said to me, “Don’t egg him on.” Then to Bryce she said, “We’ll take him off your hands. Send him in.”

  Bryce went out with his head still high, and his walk was similar to the bathing-suit competition contestants at the Miss America pageant, only more graceful.

  “Would have been fun,” I said, “to let those two spend a little more time together.”

  “You’re mean,” she said. But she was still smiling.

  Dr. Frederick strode in, a tall, thin exclamation point of a man in his late fifties with white hair, wire-framed glasses and a crisp dark suit with striped red-and-white tie. He might have been a funeral director or a minister. His well-grooved face lived in a narrow, horsey oval, his eyes dark and small but alert, with a wedge of a nose Chester Gould might have drawn.

  I found myself standing.

  “Werner Frederick,” he said with a curt nod, though of course he needed no identification. A distinct German accent turned “Werner” into “Verner.” He moved past me to reach across the desk and shake hands with Maggie, who had not risen, then extended his hand to me, and we shook. His firm handshake stopped just short of showing off. I also got another curt nod, and half-expected him to click his heels together.

  I gestured to the visitor’s chair, the mate of mine, and he sat, feet on the floor, arms folded, chin as high as Bryce’s on the latter’s exit.

  “Thank you for accepting my invitation,” Maggie said. “May I order up some coffee for you?”

  “Thank you, no. I confess I am here more out of curiosity than anything. I am as prey to that human frailty as any layman.”

  I wanted to point out that curiosity wasn’t exactly a frailty, but this was Maggie’s show. I settled back comfortably and sipped my glass of Coke—Bryce had squeezed a lime in, bless him—and listened.

  “I hope we’re not adversaries,” Maggie said. “But we are obviously on opposite sides of this comic-book controversy.”

  He shru
gged his narrow shoulders. “That fact, of course, fuels my interest. As it happens, I caught that broadcast Monday night, when you and that television host and my friend Lehman got into your heated discussion.” His smile was a thin line that curled at either end, patronizing but genuine. “I must admit, it made good viewing. I was amused by your comparison of comic books to traditional children’s fairy tales.”

  She shrugged. “I believe it to be apt.”

  “With all due respect, Miss Starr, I certainly don’t. Or is ‘Mrs.’ your preference?”

  “Professionally, it’s ‘Miss.’ And surely you can’t deny, Doctor, that children’s literature has always been violent. There’s the grimness of the Grimm Brothers, Peter Rabbit’s farmer with a shotgun, Peter Pan’s pirates.”

  “Yeah,” I said, not able to resist, “and what about those talking clams in Alice in Wonderland that got eaten up? Maybe your buddy Albert Fish read that as a kid.”

  Maggie flashed me a look that only I could read, but the shrink merely smiled. “You’ve read up on me, Mr. Starr.”

  “Part of my job around here, research. I’m clearly not the brains.”

  That amused him, just a little. He was taking no offense, I’ll give him that much.

  “I think all of us,” he said, “prize the books we read and loved as children. Why, many of us save and even cherish the worn volumes themselves, those frayed mementoes of our youth, and carry them with us into adulthood.”

  He was right. I had still had the copies of Spicy Models, published by the major, that I’d lifted from his editorial offices when I was in the seventh grade.

  “But it’s hard even to imagine, isn’t it,” he went on, in his thick accent and perfect English, “any adult or even adolescent who has outgrown comic books ever dreaming of keeping any of those garish pamphlets over time, out of sentiment or any other reason.”

  He might have been wrong about that. My Dick Tracy, Dan Dunn and Secret Agent X-9 Big Little Books were in my closet on a shelf. Next to the stack of Spicy Models.

  “Be that as it may,” Maggie said, “many comic books are perfectly harmless. Or do you object to the likes of Donald Duck or Little Lulu?”